A new variant of the virus has been detected at the Lannion public hospital in the Côtes-d’Armor department in western Brittany, France. The Brittany virus has not yet shown a higher severity or greater transmission than in past viral histories. The French Directorate General of health DGS announced on Monday that investigations are underway to assess the transmissibility and severity of this variant of the virus.
The DGS, the French Directorate General of Health, announced on Monday that a Brittany variant of the virus was detected in Brittany and is currently under investigation to assess its transmissibility and severity.
Pending investigation, the variant is classified as a “tracer virus case” by French health authorities. Health authorities first detected several patients in Brittany with symptoms of Neovirus, but these were part of a hospital cluster of infected patients who initially tested negative for Neovirus.
The virus case involved a cluster infection site in the hospital center of Lagnon, located in the province of Amor-Maritimes. Of the 79 confirmed cases detected at the center on March 13, eight carried this variant of the virus.
In a message to health professionals, the French Directorate General of Health further stated that an analysis conducted by the Pasteur Institute in France showed that “it is clear that this is a virus carrying nine mutations in the region encoding the S protein and other viral regions.
The Directorate General of Health noted Monday evening that “an evaluation is being carried out to determine the possible impact of confirming that these genetic variants can lead to under-detection of a virological test. “The Directorate General of Health added that this virus does not currently exhibit a higher severity or greater transmission compared to the past history of the virus. It also said that an in-depth investigation is being conducted to better understand this variant of the virus.
The emergence of virus variants is a natural process, as viruses mutate over Time to ensure their survival. Until now, three variants of the new coronavirus have been considered of particular concern worldwide: those first detected in the United Kingdom, then in South Africa, and in Japan (but detected in people returning from a trip to Brazil, hence the name “Brazilian variant”). At the same time, there is a second group of variants that are under international scientific scrutiny because of their potentially problematic genetic characteristics, but are still only spreading on a small scale.
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